Island Edge Ends

Crash! Boom! Boom!

Echo's large body crashed into the wall of the house and flew through it. From inside, there was the sound of crashing, followed by the frightened cries of the house's owner.

Outside, Blood Knee stood, breathing heavily, his jaw hanging loose with several cracks in his bones. After a moment, Blood Knee raised his claw and snapped his jaw back against his skull with a loud snap. He then grinned widely and stuck out a long, blood-red tongue, which he ran over his face.

Meanwhile, Echo grabbed the edges of the hole in the house and pulled his body out. Echo was bigger than Blood Knee, but sometimes size really didn't matter. However, his durability was higher than Blood Knee's, and while there were cracks on his body, he wasn't as damaged as it might seem.

Echo turned his head in a certain direction, and Blood Knee stopped grinning. "Forget it, Echo. Get back to your place! There's nothing left for you here," he shouted in a raspy voice.

Echo disregarded him and proceeded toward the house that Blood Knee was trying to keep him away from.

As Echo crouched down, Blood Knee lunged at him, swiftly grabbing his head with his claw and slamming it into the ground with a thud.

Bloody Knee leaped onto Echo's body, restraining him on the ground. Several red tendons flew out through the gaps in his bony flesh, wrapping around Echo's body. However, the tendons deliberately avoided the areas where the blue light shone.

If Echo were actually a living being, this might have posed a problem for him. However, his arms, made of black muscle, arched backward and grabbed Blood Knee, throwing him off.

Crouching down again, Echo attempted to jump, but his body bounced off the ground. In the middle of the jump, his body jammed, and he was violently thrown to the ground. Echo turned his head and noticed that one of his legs was entangled in the blood vessels crawling out of Blood Knee's body.

After struggling for a moment, Echo raised his arm, palm outstretched like a blade, and chopped at his leg. His hand easily passed through his calf, severing his leg from his body.

"You son of a bitch!" Bloody Knee barked, and more blood vessels rushed in his direction.

Echo felt no fear or pain; all he had was purpose and the effectiveness of his actions. He understood the consumption of his acquired energy, and after a brief fight with Blood Knee, he calculated that the chances of his victory were slim. Therefore, it was best to bring in another force for the current situation.

He pressed his remaining three limbs into the ground and dashed forward, following the scent of blood that wafted everywhere and seeped into every corner of the village.

With a roar, Blood Knee raced after him, more blood cymes shooting out of his body.

The doors of several nearby houses suddenly opened, and several elven families came out, their eyes faint. Men, women, and children quickly got in Echo's way in an attempt to stop him.

However, Echo did not care about the new obstacle and walked right through, scattering elves in all directions.

He jumped again to leap over the short fence that circled the house, and his leap went straight to the small shed, which was completely surrounded by chains. Echo raised his clenched fists above his head and slammed them hard into the roof of the shed. Despite the monstrous strength Echo possessed, the shed only shook, and the chains rattled.

Upon witnessing this, Blood Knee slowed down and giggled. "Stupid! You think you can defeat my curse with brute force alone!?"

Clanking Clanking

Bloody Knee stopped laughing and looked at the shed. The shock of the blow had faded, but the chains continued to shake and strain.

Bloody Knee looked again at Echo, who was raising his hands for another punch in an attempt to break into the shed. Bloody Knee was confident in the power of the curse he had placed on the shed and the village. Still, he wasn't going to risk everything failing due to carelessness after so many years of work.

As Echo prepared for another strike, Bloody Knee snarled and leaped over the fence. His blood vessels shot forward from his muscles, weaving through the air like crimson threads. He landed with a thud, poised to confront Echo directly.

Echo struck the shed again, oblivious to the attack from behind as he raised his arms for another blow. The blood vessels caught up with him, tangling his arms and entangling his body. He staggered but took no notice as the blood vessels tightened and cut deep into his pitch-black muscles.

"I'm cutting you into pieces so small you'll never be able to put yourself back together. I'm going to scatter all your parts in every direction on the island and let some of them get swallowed by those filthy elves," Bloody Knee vowed cruelly.

Bloody Knee relished in cruelty and felt exhilarated just imagining it. Echo's head fell to the side, and the crack from which the blue light emanated widened.

A small object flew out. Bloody Knee stopped talking and looked at the object. It was a pouch that opened upon hitting the ground, and the contents splashed around. They were seeds.

A hand made of crystalline blue light emerged from the crack, the embroidery on the sleeve still visible in the form of an inverted tree. A sour yellow light began to accumulate on the outstretched palm, which shot out of the palm and landed on the scattered sac.

The seeds themselves immediately sank into the ground and sprouted, growing and strengthening at the speed of a few blinks of an eye. The outstretched hand retracted into the crack again, and Echo's head snapped back into place, but the blue light was extinguished, and Echo's movements were less intense.

The green shoots grew rapidly, joining and changing into thick tendrils as thick as a human thigh, twisting like the living tentacles of an octopus. Their height reached above the roofs of the houses in the villages.

The creepers struck the shed and began to wrap themselves around it. The wood groaned, and the chains rattled even more violently. Bloody Knee, stunned by the sudden change in the situation, bared his teeth in rage. "You!" His body emptied.

Blood threads flew out from all of its cavities, and its body suddenly looked like just a monstrous hollow skeleton. Red tendons quickly tangled into sinews to stop them from their efforts.

The image of the house and the landscape reaching to the fence shuddered and took on a red tinge. The illusion of an ordinary house shattered, revealing the horrifying appearance of the house itself.

The house had transformed into a large lump of flesh riddled with pulsating veins. The door had morphed into a distorted mouth with a few blunt teeth, and in place of the window, a very large eye with its eyelid torn off stared out. Several tufts of hair stuck up in the air where the roof had been, giving the entire structure the appearance of a severed part of a head.

The ground and grass had turned into seamed, soft flesh that moved slightly. The only things not completely covered in disgusting flesh were the foundation and door of the shed. The entire monstrosity was connected to the piece of meat with the shed, which was wrapped in what looked like the remains of a hand and fingers that clasped the entire shed.

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"OOoooooo."

The flesh monstrosity let out a deep cry similar to that of a dying whale. The exposed muscles on the remains of the hand tensed as the creature struggled with the green tendons against the shed.

Echo fell to the ground, resting his weight on his hands and watching the fight for ownership of the small shed. He turned his head to look at the creature of flesh whose eye was focused on the shed.

He turned and used the gathering energy to shoot his body forward and strike the open eye of the monster.

"Oooooooh!" The creature groaned as its eye dented the inside of its head. At that moment, the treads got a suggestion, and the entire shed building began to tear away from the ground. The tender flesh of the crippled arm strained, and muscles tore before the green tendrils freed the shed from the ground and lifted it into the air.

And then they threw it away.

The moment the shed hit the ground beyond the property fence, it shattered into pieces of wood and scraps of meat. A bloody cloud of pollen flew into the air. Suddenly, everything froze and fell silent.

The red blood vessels that had been struggling with the green tendons retracted and immediately headed for the motionless skeleton they had entered, and Bloody Knee began to move again.

"Damn it! Goddammit!" He ran towards the flesh creature and dove in.

Thud

A dull sound resonated as a large stone fell from the monster's eye, revealing a face with blue eyes carved into it. Echo exhausted his energy, but he accomplished his purpose.

The rubble of the shed moved, and an elven black-haired girl straightened up in the middle of it, looking just as shabby as before, maybe a little more so. However, her eyes shone not with the joy of freedom, but with the flame of anger.

"Free, at last," she said, taking a deep breath.

She stepped out of the rubble, and as soon as her feet touched the ground, red puddles began to form underneath her, collecting themselves around her.

The girl raised her hands and touched her hair, which she pulled back and looked at the mass building in front of her.

"How does it have to hurt, doesn't it, Bloody Knee? Your years of plans ruined just like that. Ha... haha... hahaha! How ironic, you bastard!" The woman's calmness vanished. It probably took her a moment to realize that she was indeed free, and she started laughing fiercely.

She grabbed at the old clothes she was wearing and violently ripped them off until she was completely exposed. Crossing her arms over her fingers, she sank into the bloody pool she had disappeared into, leaving behind tiny ripples on the surface.

Then the pool of blood suddenly moved and began to swiftly approach the few Elves who had been knocked down by Echo earlier. The puddle stopped beneath each of them, only for a red, clawed hand to come out, grab them, and pull them down beneath the surface. The bloody pool grew wider with each swallow, its surface rippling before spitting out what looked like a human-sized dried leech.

The pool then shifted towards the flesh monster, which in that moment seemed to have shrunk. The twisted mouth retracted, and the bulging eye shrank.

There was a moment of stillness before the surface of the bloody pool rippled again, and the woman slowly began to emerge once more. Her appearance looked different now.

Her face still looked the same, but her hair had twisted and hardened into black corners. Her figure had stretched and thinned unnaturally, and her body was covered in black armor, her chest lacking any feminine features. Instead, an elastic transparent sack filled with red liquid could be seen through the black ribbing of the armor.

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A bloody mist constantly floated around the woman, billowing around her elongated body.

"Come on out. Now." She raised her hand, fingers tipped with long claws, and waved her arm violently. Three bloody sickles shot forward, striking the fleshy wall and creating three gaping wounds.

The mass shuddered and shrank a little. "I didn't expect us to finish our fight so soon," Bloody Knee's voice spoke up.

"Tck. What bullshit are you saying? You never wanted to finish the fight. You're just a mere opportunistic swine! A pathetic trick you pulled to trap me for centuries, feeding me the flesh of my children so you'd have enough meat to burrow into and take over my body!" She slashed at the meat wall again, leaving more wounds.

"I didn't expect it to take so long to fill your body, Gretel," Blood Knee replied.

"I'm the lifeblood of this land, and you're just a pathetic remnant of a fallen lesser god who tried to look into the face of a true god. You should have accepted your end from the beginning." Gretel was losing patience to argue with him and walked up to the wall she had dug her claws into, starting to tear the flesh.

A large fist of flesh shot out of the hole she had created and struck Gretel in the chest, knocking her backward.

Gretel landed once but bounced back and stopped her flight by digging her claws into the ground. She straightened up again and looked at the disfigured creature that had stepped out.

Blood Knee was now encased in red flesh, his head stretched back, several horns growing from them, and several red spikes protruded from his face. The new flesh stretched across his entire face, giving him the strange appearance of a crawfish. His lower jaw was still exposed white bone, his arms were all muscle, and his hands were tipped with four claws, with the ring fingers elongated and ending in a curled claw. The whole thing was twice the size it had been before, and while it looked monstrous, it also looked incomplete.

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"A true god, you say. She's just an imposter!"

Gretel frowned angrily. "Shut up! You still dare to say that after what you've seen and experienced? Look at what's become of you—just a pathetic parody of a living being. If it weren't for the curse you fed on, you would have perished long ago. Your Prana would have vanished, and you would have entered the Abyss. Instead, you have become a disgusting parasite"

Bloody Knee raised his hands, and the creature of flesh behind him began to shrink rapidly as it continued to be fused to his body, and he sucked it in. More and more layers of flesh enveloped his muscles, and bits of skin showed in a few places.

"Gretel. Would you like some gingerbread?" Bloody Knee provoked.

Gretel's chest bubbled angrily, but despite everything, she was wary of Bloody Knee. He had managed to capture her once before, and the fact that she had gotten out was a matter of pure chance. She didn't want to risk being captured again.

Once upon a time, they ended up fighting each other, but their fight reached a stalemate. Despite all this, Blood Knee was meat, and Gretel was blood. They were both part of a whole, and although they could hurt each other, completely destroying each other was difficult.

That was why Blood Knee lured her into the trap where she ended up as his captive. The injuries that nearly destroyed him were not caused by her, and he couldn't take over the body of a mortal being for long. So, he tried to adapt her body to his needs to take over and return to the peak of his powers.

Gretel calmed down and began to think. As the guardian of the territory, she had to consider her duty of protection. A fight with Blood Knee would be on a large scale; probably part of the island would be destroyed. Despite the fact that her blood was boiling, and she wanted to destroy Blood Knee immediately for the years of suffering her people and country had gone through, she had to think on a larger scale.

Blood Knee had years where he could plan ways to contain her again if necessary, while her world was reduced to a small cabin and dreams. So she decided to do something she never thought she would.

Behind Gretel's back, bloody wings unfurled, and she shot her body forward. Blood Knee puffed up his flesh muscles to greet her strike, but a look of surprise appeared on his crawfish face as Gretel just flew past him.

He turned to see her easily pick up Echo in stone form from the ground and fly into the air, leaving a faint dusting of blood in her wake.

"Gretel?" Blood Knee was confused by the sudden change. He could clearly feel her desire to attack him, so why was she flying away?

Denying her desire for revenge, Gretel turned in midair and flew in a certain direction.

----------------------------------------

Despite everything, the crew waited for their captain and watched the coast. Caspian was nowhere in sight. Dawn was breaking, and they hoped that during the morning, their captain would appear on the shore and sail back to the ship.

As the sun rose on the horizon, they shaded their eyes with their hands and watched the beach.

"Could something have happened?" muttered the vice-captain.

They had been waiting for some time when someone shouted. "There's something in the sky!"

They all looked up and saw a creature flying against the sun. The sunlight came through the wings, making them glow blood red.

"What... what is that?"

"It's heading this way!"

On deck, the rest of the crew slowly panicked and readied their weapons. The creature on the mute retracted its wings and dive-bombed towards the ship. But just before impact, it spread its wings again and landed as light as a feather in the middle of the deck. As soon as the creature was on its feet, the bloody wings retracted back into the body of the creature, revealing a beautiful but unnaturally drawn and thin woman. Instead of breasts, she had a container of red liquid in her chest and held a large stone with her face in her armpits. Her expression was coldly furious as she surveyed the crew.

The few sailors that remained of the original crew pointed their weapons at her, knowing they were up against an inhuman creature.

The woman waved her sharp fingers, from which a wave of blood shot out like a whip, easily cutting all the drawn weapons in half.

"Your captain will not return. Lower the sails. We're sailing," she ordered, glancing behind her at the island.

She never thought she would leave the End's Edge, but to protect and save it, she had to. Her people would have to suffer for a while longer.